


Pretty, Like a Car Crash

by LMD18



Category: Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020)
Genre: Banter, Case Fic, F/F, and annoying the Batman, better living through violence, of sorts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-07-06
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:40:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25117780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LMD18/pseuds/LMD18
Summary: Okay, so regular first dates don't include an ongoing investigation, a supervillain wannabe, and the Batman, but does that actually make thembetter?Harley and Renee go to a party. Technically, it isn't a date.
Relationships: Renee Montoya/Harleen Quinzel
Comments: 13
Kudos: 23
Collections: Little Black Dress Exchange 2020





	Pretty, Like a Car Crash

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alamorn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alamorn/gifts).



So, the Birds of Prey are kind of unofficial, and kind of illegal. Their legal front — and Montoya’s day job — is on the third floor of an old brownstone, and it does _not_ look like it’s got the Bertinelli Fortune behind it. Not for the first time, Harley wonders if they have a secret lair in the basement or something.

The door’s locked. Don’t they want customers? Harley breaks in, careful not to damage the name plate. _**Renee Montoya, Private Investigator**_ — it looks good, okay? 

And maybe all that scary righteousness isn’t as good of a fuel as Harley always thought, because Montoya’s passed out at her desk. Which will be really bad for her back when she gets a little bit older… well, _if_ she gets older, because from what Harley’s just seen these guys are making some really bad life choices. Harley knows bad life choices. She is the World Champ of bad life choices. Top tier, best of the best, instinctual. And Exhibit A of that is probably trying to get a peek at the documents under Montoya’s cheek without disturbing her sleep, because there’s a half a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red Label on the desk too and Montoya’s at her most vicious when she’s shit-faced.

Harley’s leaning over her when she notices the light flashing under the desk — and that Montoya’s wearing an earpiece. 

And then she gets Montoya’s forehead in her face and a fist to the tit. Ow. And _ow_. Montoya lunges over the desk like a zombie fueled by whisky and disturbed sleep. A _fast_ zombie. Harley sidesteps juust quickly enough. Zombies don’t course correct; Montoya crashes headfirst into the open door and swears.

This is not a nice welcome. “I thought you liked me now!”

“You broke my door!”

“It was locked!”

Montoya glares at her, then sighs and goes to the fridge. For ice, not to offer Harley a drink. Rude. “What do you want, Harley?”

“I could be here to socialize,” Harley points out. She grabs a piece of ice to crunch. “When was the last time you had a non-work-based conversation, anyway? You should work on that, it’s psychologically limiting.”

“Thanks for your concern,” Montoya says flatly. “I don’t have the time to work on my ‘non-work-based conversation’.” She got the finger quotes out. Ouch. “Gotham is overflowing with all kinds of filth. The GCPD is incompetent and corrupt. So it’s up to us to clean it up.”

“Okay, Batman. Also, ‘us’ better not include me, just saying.” Though, Harley _has_ had some good times with these crazy broads — it wouldn’t be the worst thing to be included. “You’re the rumpled alcoholic private dick now. We need to sit you down in front of a few Film Noir thrillers, get you a new script.” Actually, that’s a really fantastic idea. Movie night! Popcorn! Margaritas!

Montoya presses the bag of ice to her head. “Fuck you,” she says calmly. See? Not very nice.

“You shouldn’t talk like that to your Femme Fatale.” And she doesn’t need to laugh that much. Harley grins, puts her hands together and bats her eyelids. “I’m here for your help, private dick.” Montoya scoffs rudely at that, but she doesn’t tell Harley to get lost. Yay for progress!

“So, you know Satin, the pop star. He just bought one of those old big old houses on the river, which I’m sure you also know.”

“I’m a little old for pop idols,” Montoya says. “Honestly, so are you.”

“Eh, age is a state of mind. This Satin kid has the brain of a crabby old industrialist, anyway. I’ve seen less security at Gotham Central Bank.” Harley’s _dealt_ with less security at Gotham Central Bank. Some of the guards at Satin’s mansion might even be the same guys, completely failing to find themselves a safer and more emotionally rewarding career path.

“And a little thing like that slowed you down? I don’t believe that.”

“I can be cautious,” Harley says, and Montoya snorts. “Anyways, I cased the joint real good. I even got this little shitbag I caught trying to film me in the bath to go take some video for me of the people coming in and out of the house.” And _that_ gets Montoya’s interest — even before Harley shoves the camera in her face. “Look at this.”

Montoya watches the video in silence. “Kid’s got talent,” she says eventually.

“Oh, yeah. I’m sure the porn he directs will be be-u-ti-fully framed and lit. Now – look at this. That dark shape there?”

“The Batman,” Montoya says. No doubt. No surprise.

“And this hottie in the tight pants? Now why would Canary be lurking in the grounds of a pop star’s mansion? Why would Batsie? Haha, look at that. It’s like Bruce when he gets startled by the mailman.” But Bruce’s ‘nothing to see here’ posturing runs to laughing his head off; on the Bat looming over her, Canary freezes up, makes the — bad because _come on_ — choice not to fight, tosses her magnificent hair — extra gold streaks this week, nice — and saunters off like she onehundredfuckingpercent belongs in this bozo’s garden. To be fair, she totally works it. To be unfair, what the hell, that would have been such a fun fight to watch!

“So,” Harley says, “spill. Why are you guys interested in him?”

Montoya pours herself a drink. Harley fishes a half-clean glass from under the files and she grudgingly pours her one too. “Why are you?”

“Cass likes his music — or him, I’m not asking and whatever, there’s no accounting for taste. I was gonna kidnap him to sing at her birthday party. The girls should think he’s even cuter when he’s tied up and crying. I know I did at that age.” Harley hears Montoya breathe out an amazed “ _Jesus_ ,” and so she damn well should. Harley thinks of the best presents. She knocks back her drink. “And you aren’t even trying. Answering a question with a question is very low on the list of effective verbal deflection tactics.”

“True.” Ooh, a smile! Sort of. “How about: work it out for yourself, you like a puzzle, right?”

“Well, that is also true.” Harley props her ass on the desk. And that is definitely a bit of a smile happening there. Montoya must have rattled her brain harder than she thought. “However, I am an instant gratification kinda gal.”

Montoya sighs, gets to her feet, half-staggers over to what’s probably a closet. “And I have places to be and people to see.”

“Bullshit, not one of you guys has any life outside your little do-gooder group.”

She really doesn’t have to wave the dress at Harley quite so hard; it’s a boring long black thing but she can see it. Even if she can’t see Montoya in it, honestly — she seems the type of woman to wear a pantsuit for everything up to and including gala openings and that’s fine. Dress codes are made for breaking. Or bending. Hard.

“Get out and let me get dressed for this party.”

“You say party like other people say funeral. And, ooh, if _this_ is a deflection tactic, it’s a really fucking good one!” 

Montoya snorts. “Out,” she says.

“I love parties.”

And Montoya doesn’t say actually say no. Wow. “I’m going alone. The Bat’s seen Dinah, and Helena…” Huntress currently struggles in milieus that belong to her former life, unable to use the learned skills from it due to an unacknowledged but extremely potent mental block. Yeah. Also, Canary can’t come to the party because the Batman’s seen her? Harley doesn’t know how one leads to the other but she’s deadly curious. And Montoya clearly wants to go to this party alone like she wants to chop off her own feet or sign up for a sponsored box set binge of _Cops_. Pushing her here is taking advantage of someone in a moment of psychological weakness. Psychological torment, even.

Harley casually takes Montoya’s arm. Montoya looks at her like she’s going to try to yank it off.

“What time do I need to come pick you up and how many weapons do I bring with me?”

*

“I said to wear black.” Yeah, well, so it didn’t take long for Montoya to get over her desperation for a date/armed backup/emotional support animal. She was already at _“holy shit_ ” and _“what the hell am I doing?”_ as Harley pulled up in the car. Montoya stares at what she what she can see of her as if she’d rolled up in pink PVC. Surely she’s not that disapproving of the rainbow-striped fake fur shrug? Or the number of necklaces?

“I am. Mostly.” Some of the spangled — _black_ — tulle of Harley’s skirt has managed to expand over into the passenger seat; she corrals it so Montoya can sit down. “Are you going to get in the car or do you want me to do the whole getting out to open the door for you thing?”

Montoya sighs and gets in — carefully, though her dress isn’t that tight. “You look good,” Harley says, and she does. Fine, so her makeup is understated and her dress plain, but she totally suits it. The girls are out and up front and doing a lot of work and maybe Harley stares just a little but they are awesome.

“I don’t need to hear that from Pride Barbie,” Montoya says. Ouch. 

“Barbie would have more pink,” Harley points out. And she was going more for Punk Rock Grace Kelly, thank you very fucking much. “And no more fucking compliments for you this evening, Jesus Christ.” Montoya has the grace to look embarrassed at that. “So, where we are going?”

“Yeah, about that…”

*

Harley’s spent the past week working out how best to break into this place, she thinks dazedly as she hands over her car keys to the uniformed minion who’s popped up to take them. “Be careful with the clutch,” she says. “It’s sticky.”

Satin’s mansion is tasteless in that boring very rich people way. Yeah, there’s columns and classical shit everywhere and he’s trying with the modern art — or someone hired by him is trying — but where are the flaming guitar lamps? The horrible polar bear rugs? The unrecognizable nudes — painted by himself — of every woman he’s ever shagged? The Cultural Appropriation City tribal art? No young man with massive amounts of money he made himself was ever this restrained, right?

Well, there’s always his bedroom and such. Harley will probably get to see it. There’s no way Montoya isn’t here to snoop.

“I _knew_ you couldn’t just go to a party.” Projections play over the hallway’s stern white marble, over the ceiling, the galleries, the stairs and the floor and the people, red sunset through tangled trees moving to night sky everywhere, and Harley puts her head back and goes for a twirl among the stars. Montoya lets herself be pulled into one spin. Just one. “All work no play.” 

“That’s right.”

There’s music coming from the ballroom, bass vibrating the floor under her feet, and as they head over there, Harley finds herself being watched. Score one for catching the eye of Gotham’s Number One Bachelor ™ Bruce Wayne! She’s got a date but if he wants to bring her drinks later she will not say no.

This party really has a weird mix of people. Like, over by the temporary bar, the Falcone family heir apparent is talking to what Harley thinks is a Congresswoman. The hottie manager of HSC International Banking is cutting shapes on the dance floor, surrounded by admirers. Harley’s former boss at Arkham is loading his face with patisserie at the buffet table and who invites _him_ to a party? He’s the biggest fun sink in the universe. 

She does not want to be anywhere near him, but she does want to eat. Choices, choices. 

Montoya hands her a drink. “I’d tell you not to lower your guard here, but when was your guard ever actually up?”

“You’ve gotta give me more information for that,” Harley says. “This whole coy ‘I’d tell you but I’d have to kill you’ thing was old as balls before you even started doing it. Give me your intel. Be a Sharing Person.”

Montoya pulls her into the shadow of the stage, into a world of fairy lights and carefully-laid cables. “Over the past two months, Gotham’s experienced a rash of crime committed by teenagers, all first-timers with previously clean records. Other kids have just… disappeared. All of them were big fans of Satin. You say Cass likes him. Has she…”

“I don’t _think_ she’s more of a slippery-fingered little shit than she was when I met her?” How would she even tell?

Montoya catches sight of something over Harley’s shoulder. “Uh, go eat or something. I just have to talk to this—“

‘This’ being a woman who’s heading straight for them with a determined expression on her face. Montoya marches out to greet her, leaving Harley on her own.

The list of people Mr. J chose not to fuck with was very small, so small Harley could count their names off on the fingers of one hand. Wealth and power was certainly no obstacle to him. Hell, no shit, it was an incentive. And the number of people in this room whose robbing or intimidating Harley has been personally involved with is… really something. She’s getting startled glances, hostile stares, people trying to work out if it’s really her, people on their phones — to either the cops or their own personal muscle. Maybe she’ll get to leave here without trouble, but it’ll be waiting outside the mansion gates. 

Harley raises her glass to the girls dancing on the stage. Fucking fabulous.

She drifts over to the buffet table, well fucking away from the Doc with his gloomy face and sadistic tendencies. If that’s closer to Montoya and her gal pal, within hearing range even, well, happy coincidences happen all the time.

Harley’s getting major ex vibes here. The woman’s very elegant, which doesn’t really go with Montoya, but also super uptight, which totally does. “I’m glad to see you’re getting some more wear out of the dress,” she says. Harley feels her looking at her. “Um, you will try not to cause any scenes?”

“With the amount of security here? What do you think I am? Wonder Woman?” Montoya scoffs, but she doesn’t walk away. “Thank you for the tickets,” she says awkwardly, and knocks back her champagne in one go.

“I felt like I owed you,” Elegant Ex looks at Harley again. Harley winks at her and grins around a mouthful of canape. “Renee, are you sure you’re okay?” Haha, holy shit, this is totally the ‘are you sure you’re not chasing inappropriate and reckless forms of pleasure as a way of ignoring a sudden awareness of your own mortality and increasing age’ talk. 

“I’m fine.”

Elegant Ex is not buying it. And Harley feels like she’s the reason she’s not buying it. Well, screw her. She grabs a tray of drinks from a passing waiter, downs two, picks up two more and marches over to Montoya and her oh-so-judgy ex with a satisfying swish of skirts. This skirt is so fucking swishy. “A girl can feel neglected, y’know,” she says, and drapes herself comfortably over Montoya. The height difference is mostly in the shoes, but damn right she’s going to use it. Montoya snatches a glass and look at that, she knocks it back even faster than Harley. She also almost takes out Harley’s eye with her hair clip.

Her hair smells nice, actually. Too nice, but what did Harley expect really? They make shampoo with scents like Tropical Beach and Spring Flowers, not Gun Smoke and Spilled Bourbon. 

She suddenly feels dizzy — and it’s not the shampoo.

“Miss Yee?” Okay, so the guy beckoning over Elegant Ex like he’s summoning a minion, that’s the DA — one time Mr. J had a little bomb sent to his office, and his re-election ads are everywhere right now, but this is the first time Harley’s seen him in the flesh. The guy he’s standing with though… “Have you met our host, Mr. Satin?” Jackpot. Harley’s five steps away from Cass’s birthday present.

Montoya’s fingers close around her wrist. “Don’t spoil the party.”

Satin is a cute guy if you like that sort of thing, Harley decides, as he turns the charm on for Yee. Regular features, big white smile, sparkling brown eyes — and he’s giving off the harmless vibe so hard it has to be faked.

He’s also got a literal aura — maybe. Harley blinks and it’s gone. Huh. Could be more projections? Going in hard for that whole BDSM club vibe with the writhing disembodied limbs and hellfire? She still feels dizzy. The noise in the room comes in waves. The music’s stopped. Conversations are stuttering to a halt around her. Everyone’s attention is shifting towards Satin —

“You want another drink?” Montoya says, and Harley realizes the glass in her hand is empty. Did she drink it? Did Montoya? Satin bounces up onto the stage; Montoya steers Harley in the wrong direction, away from the stage but also away from the buffet table, towards the doors into the hall, against the tide of people drifting into the ballroom. Perhaps she’s decided now is a good time for snooping around the house? The microphone squeals as Satin picks it up, and Harley feels a sudden flash of rebellion, a sudden urge to root her feet to the ground and refuse to be moved, to stay in the ballroom— 

She feels dizzy again. Could he just stop playing with that microphone for just one fucking second? It’s like some brown noise shit.

“Hello, movers and shakers of Gotham. Most of you won’t know me except by reputation, but I know you’re all going to be my very good friends.”

A jolt goes down Harley’s spine — and _now_ she’s rooted to the spot. She glares at the stage. Fuck’s sake, _really_? This little shit? Does he even shave yet? Fucking teenage overachievers.

“That’s it, that’s all I want,” Satin says. “For us all to be friends. In this room right now is concentrated a good ninety percent of the wealth and power in Gotham. If I’m to rule over this city, I can only do so with your help and consent.”

Well, she’ll give him kudos for getting straight to the point. So many villains like to ramble and gloat, it’s like they’re compensating for something. Now Harley just needs to let him know she hasn’t got any financial or social power, so he can remove this mind control thing he’s got going on. Perhaps they can be the kind of friends where he hires her to kill people. Just because he’s a metahuman supervillain wannabe doesn’t mean he can’t sing at Cass’s birthday party, right? 

Montoya’s fingers dig into her arm. Ow, ow — she whirls around to complain at her. Oh, okay, moving— 

The compulsion slams back into her, but this time she’s fighting it. Which means at least she’s limp and unresisting as Montoya drags her to the door. They’ve got to be soooo conspicuous —

“Uh, ladies? Leaving in the middle of a performance is rather rude, don’t you think?”

— yep.

Right, so she needs pain. Snatching up a fork and stabbing it into her arm is super undramatic, but it works a charm —

“Bring them here.”

— just in time. 

The thing about rich and influential people is that they very rarely get there by being super good at fighting. Just as a general rule.

Harley ducks out of the way of a banker’s arms, stabs some patrician-looking guy in the dick with her fork and laughs as he reels away from her sobbing. Of course, now she’s lost the fork, that’s when the heavyweight boxing champion charges up.

Obviously, general rules are just that. General.

She punches him. He doesn’t even flinch. But he does grab her by the back of the neck as she tries to dodge past him, for the full kitten carried by its fucking scruff experience. Champagne flutes and champagne rain down around them as Montoya hits him over the head with a serving tray — without bothering to empty it first. She makes a good dent in the tray, but he’s unmoved, and she swears as she’s caught in a bear hug by a guy who Harley thinks works for the Maronis. Maybe as an accountant; he sure doesn’t take Montoya slamming the back of her head into his face all that well. You’d think a gangster would be tougher.

Trying to pry open this great slab of meat’s fingers isn’t working out. He starts moving back toward the stage. Harley yanks up her skirt with one hand, rooting around among the layers of tulle. “Hang on just a sec.”

She always thinks there’s something super satisfying about a gas bomb, even when it goes off right at her feet — or, in this case, tossed into the face of the guy behind her. He squeals, he lets go, he goes down clawing at his face — it’s great.

The path out into the hall is a whirl of running and punching and kicking and the occasional bite. Wimpy rich people give way to actual goons, just a scattering but some of the ones coming down the grand staircase are waving guns about. That’s inconvenient.

The projections are currently on ‘dawn sky’. The goons run through them like ugly angels with assault rifles.

“Stop right there!”

She lobs a smoke bomb, dives behind the projection equipment with Montoya. “You weren’t affected?” Harley says as bullets clatter off the machinery. The projector spits sparks and the projections move faster. She’s lost a shoe, and she mourns it quietly.

Montoya huffs out a laugh. “It’s hard to pay attention to anyone else when you’re around,” she says, so matter-of-factly that Harley almost lets the comment slide past her as just another dig. Which it might be! But, still, half a second of attention on it and it gets all the warming qualities of neat vodka. She can’t keep the grin off her face. “Also, earplugs.”

Harley isn’t convinced it’s that simple, but okay. A bullet crunches the metal by her head; the projector sparks some more. Stars spin around them.

Montoya’s got blood on her mouth and her eyeliner’s smudged. She swears and shoves a strand of hair out of her face.

“You should just kill it,” Harley says.

“What the hell?”

“The relationship. It’s over, it didn’t work, it made you miserable — it’s still making you miserable. Drive a tank over it and leave it for fucking dead. I did and look at me now.”

“Not everyone has a chemical plant to blow up,” Montoya says. She kicks her shoes off and fishes out her flats from her bag. The bullets stop; Harley listens to the goons’ footsteps on the floor, the crunch of shell casings. The projector is smoking, shaking, making a high-pitched whine. Their eyes meet.

The projection equipment exploding could’ve made a bigger boom, but it’s overpowering in that space. Harley’s too busy diving away from it in a spray of shrapnel to fully appreciate the light show. Or the screams of the goons.

She ducks into the cloakroom doorway. Montoya scrambles in after her, smoke-smudged and scratched up. She’s grabbed up a goon’s gun, and she grins, fierce and bright and bloody and fucking beautiful, as she crouches in the doorway with it. “I came here with you and still hoped I could investigate quietly. What kind of idiot am I?”

“He went for the villain speech,” Harley starts to wriggle out of her skirt. “I think you’re past the needing evidence part.”

Montoya’s staring. “What are you doing?”

Harley turns the skirt inside out, lost for a moment in a world of sparkly tulle as she retrieves the equipment belt hooked to the waistband. She couldn’t bring anything large or too heavy, it would ruin the shape, but— 

“Ta-da! Bombs, knives, all the essentials. And a present for you.” She tosses Montoya a pair of knuckledusters, slings the belt over her shoulder and dumps the skirt on the floor.

“Thanks, Rambo. Or should that be Cinderella?” Montoya waves her lost shoe at her. When did she have time to pick that up? 

Harley could take it off her and put it on herself, but where’s the fun in that? She sticks her foot out. And Montoya doesn’t even look surprised, of course she doesn’t, she just rests the gun in her lap and reaches out. 

After the cold marble floor, her fingers are little points of heat against Harley’s foot, sliding up to curl around her ankle as she slips the shoe on. Okay, that’s nice. Really nice. Like, zero-to-sixty in two and a half seconds like a fucking Bugatti kind of nice. Montoya’s neckline is askew, Harley can see the edge of a blue bra framing her lush, full breasts, and, fine, maybe the urge to lick them has passed through her head before, but never as strongly as this, what the hell? 

Montoya’s eyes flick over her tattoos and linger on the pink and silver sequin hot pants her skirt had been hiding all night. 

“You really don’t like wearing black.”

“You want me to take them off?” Harley teases, and Montoya looks up at her with her half-grin and her fucking spectacular cleavage and her hands warm and surprisingly strong on Harley’s ankle and calf, and yep, _sold_. And Montoya knows it. 

Bullets ping off the floor; they both retreat further away from the door.

“If we don’t get killed or arrested,” Harley says, “we can go back to your place? You can show me your secret underground lair.” Montoya’s eyebrow goes up and… actually, okay, whatever, it wasn’t _meant_ as a euphemism but Harley can go with that. She lobs a couple of smoke bombs out the door, Montoya fires a couple of warning shots — and the ground shakes. Plaster dust rains from the ceiling. They look at each other. “That wasn’t me. Was that you?”

*

“So, do you think if we knock out or kill Satin, everyone goes back to normal?” 

They march through the smoke. Some guy grabs Harley’s shoulder and gets punched in the nuts with a hand full of rings. She mentally notes down a life lesson for Cass — #2678: You only need to carry around knuckledusters if you don’t wear enough jewelry. 

#2679: A melee fight never has only two sides. It’d be nice to think the reason they have fewer attackers now is that they’re just so badass, but really, it just means that little fuckbag has suddenly got more pressing concerns. 

“It’s worth a try,” Montoya says. The building trembles. A bust of some Greek girl falls from its plinth. She catches it and heaves it into the arms of some skinny socialite — who goes over like a bowling pin. Neat. “Follow the sound of explosions?” AKA ‘head into the clouds of smoke billowing from the ballroom doors’. The ballroom, where it’s difficult to see, and there are unconscious people all over the floor, and there’s a chemical smell lingering in the air, chloroform or some shit.

So, the first explosion was the delivery system for the knockout gas, and the second — Harley feels a breeze on her face — was to take down a wall? There’s not enough gas left to be a problem for her; she looks at Montoya automatically, squinting through the smoke, but she’s got a corner of her dress pulled up over her face and seems to be alright. Oh, look, there’s a thigh holster — no wonder she was sitting down carefully earlier, wow.

Harley finds herself on edge. Okay, so this not being able to see more than an arm’s length in front of her thing is getting old. Also, on previous experience, it doesn’t go well for her.

Someone moves through the smoke behind her, so fast it drags fucking claws across her fight or flight reflex. She spins around, grabs Montoya’s gun and hears her curse as she shoots. The sound of a bullet bouncing right off high-tech armor is a horrible, exhilarating, _familiar_ one. So is the shape looming out of the smoke.

Then she’s flying, pain flaring from her jaw, over her face, down her neck. The Batman hasn’t got a chivalrous bone in his body, but he pulled his punch. He probably thought she was a mind-controlled civilian, she thinks woozily, and hears Montoya shout her name through a thousand layers of fabric as she hits the ground. Next time he’ll punch harder. She fades out —

— warm hands on her face —

_“Are you okay? Harley?”_

— a sharp flash of pain —

 _“Don’t you fucking dare pass out now.”_ Hissed, not even a whisper. Harley blinks, focuses her eyes on Montoya’s scowl. 

She totally prefers the grin. Montoya should grin more. Welp, she’ll have the chance. Old Bats is here, they can go home and Harley can ice her jaw and think of a new birthday present for Cass because he’ll deal with Satin in a way that’ll probably mess up his looks as well as maybe his singing voice and —

“Did you think I needed to see you to control you?”

Ah, okay, not dealt with yet then. Also, that sounds kind of… ominous?

She forces her head to move. Ow, ow, ow, ow, _wow_. Is that the Batman _on his knees_? In front of Satin? The smoke makes the picture not so clear, but holy fucking hell, her day is _made_. Mr. J would be so fucking jealous. She needs to burn the image into her eyeballs because it won’t last, he’ll break free of the mind control any second now —

Something drops from his hand and rolls across the floor towards Harley and Montoya, and Harley knows what’s going to happen next before it even does because Montoya is what she is, a dumb do-gooder vigilante with slightly more self-preservation than the Bat but so much less fucking armor. She snatches up the device as it rolls against her leg. Harley tries to grab her — he’s just pretending, he doesn’t need Montoya’s help, she doesn’t even like or trust him, why does she need to interfere in his necessary death — but her hands are heavy and clumsy and all she can do is watch as Montoya throws herself bodily at Satin. 

It’s not a graceful move, but it is effective. And it seems to work? They go down in a heap together. The device — that could have been the keys to the Batmobile for all Montoya fucking knew — also worked? Maybe? The air’s suddenly full of infernal screams and writhing shapes, anyway. Yay. So either that punch knocked something new and exciting loose in Harley’s head or this is something like Enchantress’s bullshit. Magic and aliens and metahumans, witches and mutant crocodiles and fire gods, possession and transformation and portals to other dimensions, so many people able to go around shitting on scientific principles at will — it makes reality _real_ hard to pin down but it’s all so fucking beautiful. 

The Batman pulls out another gadget. Good for him. The sound and light disappear, sucked away like someone turned on a mystical vacuum cleaner. Good for him. Harley clambers to her feet, the room spinning around her. Great stuff, Bats, now get back on your knees and thank the nice Bird of Prey. 

“Where am I? Oh god. What the hell?” Satin curls in a ball on the floor. He sounds so much less commanding now. 

“Such a good actor.” Montoya, on the other hand, positively purrs. The people on the floor lurch to their feet, throwing themselves on the Batman like football players performing a particularly violent touchdown celebration. Fewer tight pants and tight asses, though. Montoya stands up slowly, elegantly. For the first time, she looks completely comfortable in that dress. And fucking terrifying. “You wanted to be admired and adored. I, Sataroth, gave you that, but you failed me in the end.”

Ah. Shit.

“And what does Renee Montoya want?” As Harley speaks, the demon (alien?) in Montoya’s body turns to look at her, harsh and commanding and honestly kind of hot. Especially when the demon (alien? who even knows) and the woman seem to merge together, and it’s Montoya herself stalking over to Harley. Just the — _very_ — bad version.

“For everyone to obey the fucking law,” she says, smiling. And look at that, her eyes are glowing. “It’s such a simple thing, right?”

“Wow, hello dystopia. I’d rather worship Satin’s pretty ass.”

“Don’t start,” Montoya snaps, and for a second there, everything is normal. “You of all people don’t get to lecture me about wanting to make people do what I want.” And then it’s back to weird. She reaches out to touch Harley’s face, thumb brushing over her sore jaw. Bad Renee is gentler, who knew?

“That was never my thing and you know it.” She would never have given Harley the time of day if it was. And vice versa.

“Do you want him to kneel to you before I kill him?”

Aw, that’s so romantic for a first date! And so tempting! On the one hand, people try to kill the Batman a lot and it never fucking takes and Harley suspects he’s fucked up enough to not hold a demon-corrupted attempt on his life against Montoya, but on the other, when she’s de-demoned she’ll be shamed forever among the Gotham vigilantes set.

And about that…

“How does this ‘off with his head’ stuff work with your law and order shtick?” she asks, honestly curious.

She expects some bullshit about the ‘greater good’ or ‘the rules don’t apply to me’ — what she gets is something flickering behind Montoya’s eyes. Huh. 

“Cut the crap,” Harley says. “You don’t really want this. Just kick that fucking parasite out already. You’re more fun than this.” And then she kisses her, because it’s the end of the evening and who’s she to talk someone down from supervillainy and yeah, she could try punching her out but honestly, she’s wanted to do this for ages, so. Fuck. It.

And Montoya’s hard and unmoving like a statue, because she never makes Harley’s life easy, she’s got some kind of vendetta.

“It’s not that easy,” Satin, the smug little dick, says as Harley pulls back, something like a cold rock in her stomach.

“Shut up, shut up.” And okay, so talking it is then. “Look, I get it, people are shit. Corrupt, cruel, selfish, greedy — hell, I’m three of those things right here. But this isn’t you. This is a momentary expression of helplessness in the face of metahuman power, human mortality, and the enormity of the task your obsessive-compulsive urge to fix the world set for you. And yeah, you can’t fix city hall or the cops with knuckledusters, and Gotham’s Gotham, y’know, the dirt’s kinda built in and personally I kinda like it, but! You three do-gooders are doing good out there, you’re making a difference, and don’t lie, you’re enjoying the fight—“

Montoya grabs her face. Like, literally — what nails she’s got dig into Harley’s skin as she kisses her, hard. 

Her lips are so soft. Her kiss is so fierce and _bitey_. Harley can taste someone’s blood in her mouth, Montoya’s hands tangle in her hair, she deepens the kiss and there is the lost soul howling of hellish beings in her ears. She does the dip and Montoya laughs in her mouth.

“See, lots more fun,” Harley says, heart pounding and adrenaline pumping like she just robbed the Mint, Sata-whatsit’s infernal presence churning the air around them. Her grin makes her bruised face hurt.

“Screw you,” Montoya says amiably. 

The surviving windows shatter as whateverthehellfuckthatis streams out into the night. Its rich and powerful puppets go down like, well, puppets, dropped by their master.

Harley finds the Batman looking at Montoya and her. Seriously? He’s got a choice between pursuing a freaky creature with ambitions to take over the world and arresting Harley and he might actually choose Harley? Motherfucker.

“We _helped_.” 

Yeah, so he’s not that petty. He takes off after the demon, Montoya leans against Harley with a tired sigh, chin sharp against her shoulder — and Satin sits up. He runs his hands through his hair and gives Harley a lop-sided grin. “You think you’re still going to be popular around here?” she says. “Why aren’t you running?”

“Some kind of weird criminal tried to pull something at my party and the Batman destroyed a chunk of my house. I’m a victim here too.”

“We’ll see about that, you little shit,” Montoya mumbles against Harley’s neck. 

Harley pulls away from her just enough to fish a crumbled business card from her bra. Glitter hangs in the air, catches in Montoya’s hair. “Here, kid. If you can still sing — and you aren’t in prison this time next week — I have a gig for you. Call me.”

“Jesus. You don’t give up easily.” Harley feels like Montoya should be outraged with her; this knowing amusement is no fun.

Montoya kisses her, a soft, slow electric brush of lips. “Thanks.”

Well, maybe a little fun.

“So, you invited yourself back to my place…”

“Some of the people here made calls about me,” Harley confesses. If it ruins the mood, so does walking out into a hail of bullets. “The calling in favors and breaking out pocketbooks kinda calls.” Montoya frowns.

“Hitmen?”

“At least.”

Montoya grins. “Then they know what they’re getting into.”

Harley beams. Honestly? She doesn’t think they do.

**Author's Note:**

> For Satin I borrowed - and took took major liberties with - the power set of a minor comics villain. Satin Satan, I'm so sorry.


End file.
